Canta che ti passa: Social Commentary in Music (ITA4117.01)

Barbara Alfano

‘Canta che ti passa,’ ‘Sing and you’ll feel better,’ says an old Italian adage. Yet, Italians do not always sing to forget their troubles. Much of the Italian musical tradition expresses social and political commentary, seriously or ironically. Songs as diverse and far apart in time as Toto Cotugno’s populist ‘L’italiano’ (An Italian, 1983), Giorgio Gaber’s intellectually engaged ‘Io Non mi sento italiano’ (I’m Not Really Italian, 2003), and Nilla Pizzi’s tongue-in-cheek ‘Papaveri e papere’ (Poppies and Ducks, 1952) are equally representative of the many cultural faces of Italy. Through music, but not only, students will learn what Italians have to say about their own cultural, social, and political habits, and possibly sing along. Journal articles, interviews, advertisements, web sites, film, and videos will also be part of this course. Students will strengthen their speaking skills and become familiar with the linguistic structures that will enable them to express their viewpoints with a certain ease, developing, on the writing side, paragraph-level discourse. We will focus in particular on the use of the subjunctive and the conditional, and on the agreement of verbal tenses, while also reviewing the basic grammar covered in the first two terms of Italian. Intermediate-low level. Conducted in Italian.